Well, discourse markers are kinda a feature of, like, natural speech in, you know, basically every language. Jon Campbell-Larsen takes us through the how and why of teaching Discourse Markers. Here is a link to an example of how to scaffold students practicing these markers (based on Jon’s KOTESOL hand out). Feel free to adapt it for your own classes.

Hello to the people who attended my KOTESOL pronunciation workshop. I’ve managed to upload the colour vowel chart already. I’ll be uploading the video and the materials and ideas after the insanity of midterm grading has subsided. So check back soon!

Vowels are the most difficult of the phonemes to teach. Consonants generally don’t differ that much between language and, crucially, consonants have things touch – tongue between the teeth, bottom lip on the teeth etc – which makes it easier to describe to students. Vowels on the other hand have anything in the mouth making contact with another part. This makes it difficult to explain to students. Of course, we have the classic ‘mouth map’ that we can show students but that seems quite academic.

Students get a much better sense of where vowel sounds are produced using the colour chart attached below. Having two words that students can practice gives them double the chance to FEEL where the sounds are produced. The left side is the front of the mouth, the right is the back of the throat.

However, even when practicing, students are frequently sat closer to their partner, speaking softly. This is not good for FEELING where a vowel is being produced. For that, we need VOLUME.

Solution 1: separating out the students. Get them at opposite ends of the classroom having to speak to their partners. The extra volume necessary helps them to concentrate on where the sound is coming from, using the colour chart.

Solution 2: if you don’t have space – play music. The extra volume will force the students to speak up.

A loud classroom is a productive classroom.

The colour chart is not mine, so I’ve put the source on the bottom of the chart.

Plurals are easy, right? There’s one or there’s more than one… pretty straight forward. “All”, “every”, “All the” “each” – that’s pretty simple too, isn’t it? Well, hold on to something sturdy as Eytan Zweig gets you to think a little deeper about how we both form and understand language.

The literal meaning (semantics) and the meaning of the use (pragmatics) of the language is a vital part of how we communicate in real life. So, let’s a show like this is chomping at the bit to dig down into this topic.

In the first of this batch of hit-n-run quickie interviews from the KOTESOL conference in Seoul at the end of 2016, I spoke to Justin McKibben about how we can expand students roles. By giving students certain speaking tasks the traditional classroom would consider a teacher’s job, we can vastly increase student talk time and give them a broader sense of control in their own classroom.

Justin takes us through some of the techniques we can use in our classrooms to shift away from the traditional teacher-fronted classroom. You can start using these techniques immediately.

In this end-of-year episode, we get the funnier side of teaching English with stories from listeners and future interviewees. Special thanks to Grace, Thomas, Matthew, Jon, Fergal, James, Mierkamil, Oksana, Jacob, Roger, Gordon, and Jake.